


Ballad of the Heart

by cpt_winniethepooh



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Feral Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Monster of the Week, Nobody Likes Witchers, POV Outsider, Soft Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22861444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh
Summary: When Ivolde's town is attacked by harpies, they ask the Witcher for help. Little do they know that he comes with a singing, bubbly attachement in the form of a bard, and they trust neither of them - until they learn to.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 72
Kudos: 982
Collections: Outsider & Alternative POVs





	Ballad of the Heart

"Don't go near him," Lagron warns Ivolde when they set out.

The Witcher was hired to kill the nest of harpies that had been terrorizing the area for months. It was a blotched business: by the time the townsfolk came to an agreement that they needed his help, only a dozen families were left. The rest were either picked on by the monsters, or tried to run -- where they also had been picked on by the monsters.

After the Witcher showed up with the harpy heads, there was no village left to stay in, and no question about their best course of action: they put what else they had together, and asked the Witcher to escort what was left of the village through the forest, toward the nearest settlement on the other side of the hill. 

It's a two-day long walk in the best of times; now, however, they have to bring all their belongings, four elders of the town and six children, and they need to hunt to manage. On the first eve of the journey they are not yet one third through. 

During the day, nothing is amiss. They are all quiet, pondering about what they had gone through and the hardships that are sure to come. When dusk falls, they are even quieter as they huddle close to a small bonfire.

The Witcher keeps to the shadows, and away from them. That's when Lagron warns her. 

She, personally, has never met another Witcher, and she knows that neither did Lagron. He wants the best for her as she is his sister's daughter, but he also is one of the most sour people she knows. 

She wants to talk to him, or at the very least,  _ listen _ , not that the Witcher seems to talk much. He grunts more often than not, and it's anybody's guess if he means left or right. But he brought the harpies down, and so they follow him. 

So she just watches out of the corner of her eye as they are getting ready for the warm embrace of the cold, wet ground as their bed. The Witcher's golden eyes sweep the forest, alert, as if he's preparing himself. He's ready for an attack, even more so than he was during the day. 

"Monsters bump in the dark of the night," her best friend, Somel says, following her gaze. She agrees. She can't imagine where he's got the strength from; she's exhausted after only a day of this lifestyle. 

When only the embers shimmer faintly in the dark, all the rustling in the underbush gets amplified. She tries to calm herself. There are many animals that hunt at night but pose no threat, and now they even have a Witcher. But when said Witcher gets up and draws his sword, and a few others stumble to their feet, she sits upright and grabs her small knife too.

"It's me, don't shoot," calls a voice from somewhere in the dark.

More get to their feet, but the Witcher's shoulders relax and he sheats his sword. "I don't shoot," he says.

"Better safe than sorry," says the voice, far too cheerfully, considering the circumstances.

It's hard to see his features as he gets to the camp, but he's clearly comfortable enough to walk right up to the Witcher and then plomp down right at his bunk and begin taking his boots off.

"It's fine, I'm not the enemy," he says, just noticing the people staring at him. "Go back to sleep."

"Jaskier," the Witcher sighs. "I thought we agreed to meet at the other side of the forest?" 

There's something in his voice that Ivolde can't quite place, especially not over the hustle of soft grumbles as the villages settle down again. 

"Eh, this way I can travel with you," the newcomer answers, and then their voices get too low for her to hear. But one thing is clear: if this Jaskier chose sleeping in a forest and having to sleep with one eye open over the alternative, then his situation is no better than Ivolde's. 

Jaskier, as it turns out, is a bard. Not only are his clothes made from a much finer fabric, in impractical shapes and outlandish colors, he also can't stop humming and talking about his songs.

The villagers side-eye him warily, but the Witcher doesn't say a word, so neither do they. It was through the bard's songs (thought not directly from him) that they have heard about him, after all, but that doesn't mean the grown-ups will warm up to his constant chatting anytime soon. 

The kids and the younger folk eagerly listen, though. The previous day's quiet trek is exchanged for tales of grand battles and saving damsels, all featuring the brave and strong Witcher. Jaskier doesn't raise his voice but it still carries far, and Ivolde doesn't need to keep too close to him to catch his every word.

Some are less happy about that than others, though. 

"He'll scatter our pray," mutters old Bram under his breath. 

"The kids and horses would do that regardless," Somel reminds him. 

What's curious is that the Witcher doesn't seem to mind. Ivolde saw him get visibly frustrated from a couple bickering too loudly, and yet, now, he just keeps walking with his horse on a leash, and occasionally grunting whenever Jaskier throws in a 'right, Geralt?'.

Jaskier doesn't go hunting with the men in the afternoon, and a smug smile appears on Lagron's face at that as they depart. 

"He'll go hungry then," he says.

Ivolde would excuse her uncle's behavior, given that it's hard times and all who can help are expected to pull their share of the work, but Lagron was like this even during the best of times. 

She commits to putting some scraps aside from her dinner for the bard, and does indeed smuggle some berries that she picked with the women and even half of a rabbit's thigh without Lagron noticing -- he's too busy wolfing his food down and scowling at Jaskier, who is yet again fiddling with his lute.

When they are about to retire, he puts his lute down and heads for the trees, presumably to relieve himself. Ivolde pretends to be really in conversation with Somel, and luckily, Jaskier comes back after Lagron has gone to his place.

"I saved this for you," she says, and offers the scrappy meal to him.

He is shocked for maybe a fraction of a second, then a wide, happy smile blooms on his face.

"Thank you so much, lovely lady!" he beams with an exaggerated bow. "What’s your name? You have the kindest heart of all the people here." 

"I’m Ivolde, and I saw them not giving you any food since you didn't go hunting."

"They see no use for me even though without me, they wouldn't have known to seek Geralt’s help," Jaskier shrugs carelessly, still smiling. "But you really should eat this; I can't accept."

"But you'll go hungry," Ivolde says, lost.

"He won't," the Witcher speaks up in his unusually deep voice, and Ivolde jumps -- she hadn't seen him approaching, and had thought everybody but her, Jaskier and Somel, watching from the other side of the embers of the campfire, has gone to sleep. 

"Luckily some know how to be grateful," Jaskier nods, and looks up at the Witcher as if they're not in the middle of a cold, dark and dangerous journey, but at a cozy inn instead. 

The Witcher passes his satchel to Jaskier, who holds it up and looks at Ivolde. "Dinner! Please eat yours, you'll need your strength." 

"Okay," she nods, and vanishes the rest of the rabbit foot while Jaskier sits by the Witcher's side, almost leaning on him, and puts his own rations away. 

  
  


Ivolde thinks she is only imagining things the next day until Somel murmurs, "He likes you," and nods at the Witcher.

He didn't greet Ivolde with a beaming smile that morning, unlike the bard, but when she stopped to fix her bags on her shoulder he did make sure to wait for her to catch up before he led them onwards. And at lunch, he brought her a fresh flask of water from the stream; an act that had Lagron frowning with new enthusiasm.

"He wants something from you," Lagron continues the frowning well into the afternoon. "You'll be sleeping by my side tonight in case he tries anything."

"He won't try anything," Somel rolls his eyes.

"As if you could defer him," Ivolde snorts, which has Lagron going on and on about respect and honour, but at least the subject is dropped. 

Jaskier gets the same treatment at dinner as the day before, but this time, Ivolde isn't fooled. He just sings to the campsite softly as the rest eat, then hangs back at the Witcher's side to get his own meal. 

"I'm surprised he lets the little parasite hangin' around," Lagron, ever the kind and cheerful, says when he realizes that Jaskier's food is supplied by the Witcher. 

He does not say it loudly, because apparently he is smarter than what Ivolde's been giving him credit for. 

Somel is much more patient with him than her. "I don't think he's a parasite," he says lowly. 

"He's a leech," Lagron insists. "He's only there for free material to sing about! He's a nobody without the Butcher. He even steals his rations!"

"The Witcher is free to give his share away to whomever he wants to," Ivolde scoffs.

"I think, if anything, the Witcher needs him more than the other way around," Somel says. "Way I heard he wasn't welcome much before the tale of his epic victory against the elves, and he can thank the bard for that."

"He does nothing but sing," Lagron says dismissively. "He's useless. He can’t even hunt and get his own food like a man."

Ivolde, respectfully, disagrees.

Ivolde spent the long journey watching how he tweaks the lines and plays with the melody until the final song is nothing like what they started with, and nothing like reality, according to the Witcher. Listening to how a bard composes his song is fascinating.

The Witcher still doesn't speak much by day five, but since Ivolde is paying attention now, she can see some of his few tells. How his lips curl up the slightest when Jaskier mentions his heroics in a song, for instance; see how he glares when someone gets too close to his horse; how he doesn't care about the distant howling of wolves yet will not let the bard wander into the woods alone. 

Jaskier, on the other hand, is one of the most talkative people she has ever met. It's a sharp contrast to the Witcher, and it reveals a lot about them both -- for instance, that dragging a bard across the forest was easily the smartest thing the Witcher has done so far. The children don't complain about being hungry and the old don't complain about being tired when they have his antics to focus on. The dark night is a lot less scary when there's a lute constantly playing in the background, and the miles go by faster when they have something to occupy their minds with other than their aching joints. 

She's sure that their group would have fallen apart not even midway to their destination without Jaskier, and in that, he is proven just as useful -- if not more so -- than the Witcher. 

"I think they both need each other," she finally says, instead of trying to explain any of this to Lagron. "It's better together than alone."

Lagron only grumbles, but Somel smiles at her, and she smiles back.

It takes them three times as long as it would have without the baggage and all, but finally, they can see the lovely lights of their next town in the valley below. 

"We can't make through the canyon at night," the Witcher says. "We set up camp here and get going in the morning." 

Loud protests follow his words; the idea of a roof over their heads and maybe some warm water has everybody's hopes up. 

"I'd go now and rest later," old Bram protests. "What good are you if you can't take us through?" 

"I won't have you break your neck on my watch," the Witcher says. "Settle down."

"You can't order us around!" somebody else says. 

"My cousin owns a tavern there, we could stay in real beds!" is what has them all in a frenzy. 

"I brought you this far, and I will take you the rest of the way at first light," the Witcher tries.

"You've taken our money for nothing, and now you're a coward to go ahead?" 

The Witcher closes his eyes and sighs; however, Ivolde's attention is caught by the bard, who pops up at the Witcher's shoulder. 

"He didn't take half of what he should've from you, and he kept up every night so you could sleep," he says, his trained voice easily heard above theirs. "He chased a Wendigo away midway through from our trail and you didn't even notice. You would all be dead without him, or starving at the very best, because you wouldn't have caught a slug without his help!" 

Some mutter indignantly, but most of them fall silent. The threat of the Wendigo, however absent now, is a powerful one, and it helps them realize how lost they would be without the Witcher. 

"I didn't see no Wendigo," Lagron grumbles, but unfortunately, it's heard in the quiet.

"You'd be dead if you had," Jaskier rounds on him. "But by all means, feel free to wander around in the dark and break your neck in the narrow, rocky path down in the dark, or light a torch so that every creature can spot and kill you from a mile away! Seven days through the woods would all be for nothing, after all!"

The Witcher puts his hand on Jaskier's shoulder. "Jaskier," he says softly. 

But Lagron has backed off. He is clearly taken aback by the outburst, as are all: not even Ivolde thought the bard had it in him to be anything other than cheery and hopeful. 

"We're setting up camp here, and go at first light," Jaskier pronounces, and this time, there isn't a single complaint. 

He doesn't play his lute before they go to sleep, so maybe that's why Ivolde wakes up in the middle of the night, when even the embers are dead and dark. The moon is half-hidden on the sky, but the stars are bright, so Ivolde can see all the lumps around her -- her campmates, sleeping soundly.

The Witcher's hair is bright in the darkness, and his amber eyes flash when she sits up to turn to her other side. She waves sleepily, and he nods back. 

Next to him, Jaskier's clothing is also a visible spot against the silhouette of the trees. His head is on the Witcher's shoulder, and he is snoring softly. The Witcher doesn't seem the least bothered by this; in fact, if Ivolde wouldn't be so sleepy, she would swear that it's his coat around the bard's shoulders. 

She smiles and fades back to the world of dreams about soft beds and warm blankets. 

The Witcher has everybody up even before the Sun hits the horizon, so they can begin the last stretch at first light. 

He was right not to let the villagers go on their own: even with torches, they wouldn't have made the way down. The rocky path is only wide enough for one person at a time, and is full of unstable patches and sharp turns where one wrong move could send a person down to their death. 

The Witcher leads the road, and they follow in a single line after him. 

Lagron, old Bram and the other complainers hang back so they don't have to face the Witcher, therefore Ivolde finds herself between Somel and Jaskier. The bard doesn't bother with his lute this time, and watches his feet instead: he only trips up a couple of times, but never falls. 

"How did you end up with him?" Somel asks when the quiet has gone on for too long. 

"Would you believe I saw him brooding alone at a bar and knew I found my destiny?" Jaskier asks.

"Maybe," Somel says, and steps over a tree-trunk. "You’ve been together since?"

"Well," Jaskier drawls, and uses the excuse of minding his step to hesitate. "We do go our different ways from time to time."

"It can't be for long," Ivolde joins in. She needs to raise her skirt to manage the path. "You're well acquainted."

Jaskier sighs. "We had our ups and downs. 'I'm a Witcher. I don't have friends. I live alone'," he intones in a mock-deep voice, but the cadence is spot-on. "But that was then, and now he's a big softie if you get to know him. Be kind to him and he'll never forget it, I swear."

They all chuckle at that. "His fame is very different," Somel says.

"Yeah, well, songs about him doing favors for free don't sell well, and don't help our case when we negotiate," Jaskier admits. "And it's not as poetic either! Imagine our journey: nothing major happened. Who would pay to hear that?" 

"Our children," Somel says without missing a beat. 

"Who don't have money," Jaskier counters. 

"So it's all made-up?" Ivolde asks, disappointed. 

"Oh no," Jaskier hurries to say. "Not in the least. But if I were to sing about this adventure, I'd mention that Geralt fought off the Wendigo while the ladies were screaming for help and the men were too afraid to help, you know. Stuff that could've happened, just... didn't."

They think about that. She sees his point, but also understands why the Witcher didn't care more about the songs' contents. 

"And," Jaskier adds, "I never write about things that Geralt couldn't have done. He did chase that Wendigo off, by the way, but he didn't kill it because following it would've left you unprotected. The next person who hires us should know that he could kill it, however."

"Fair point," Somel says.

"You say 'us'," Ivolde says. "So you won't leave again?" 

Jaskier looks ahead at the white head, leading their group down to safety.

"Not if I can help it," he says confidently. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Was this just a mindless oneshot I spent smiling about while falling asleep for a few nights? Yes. Do I usually write stuff that has a point, therefore am I a bit disappointed with how weightless this turned out to be? Also yes. Would I still love and appreciate your comments and kudos? Fuck yes.


End file.
